The Blind

by A. F. Brady

  “Yeah, I know.” She shoots her arm out in an aw-shucks gesture and throws the yellow string onto the floor. “He gave me these yarns for my hair, too.”

  I pick up the string and hold it in my fist. “Tashawndra, I know it hurts when someone you like looks at someone else, but it’s important to react appropriately. Do you want to say anything to Julie?” Julie’s been leaning over us like an eager water boy during the halftime huddle. Her mouth hung open as she observed our interaction, and now that she’s being addressed, she pops up straight and composes herself.

  “I’m sorry I got jealous in your group, Miss Julie. I know people gonna look at you because you beautiful, and I know it don’t mean that I can throw things at anybody.” She tugs at her dreads.

  “Thank you, Tashawndra. And I think you’re beautiful, too.” Tashawndra blushes as a shy smile spreads across her face, and she pulls her shoulder up to her chin.

  “You gonna talk to Barry about this?” I ask her.

  “Yeah, I guess I could forgive him.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” I hand her back the yellow string, and she ties it into one of the dreads flopping down over her eyes. We walk out of Julie’s office together, and I take a deep breath of institutional air to clear my nose of the insufferable scent from her diffuser. It’s days like this that make me feel like a zookeeper, and I’m in awe of the level of shit I can continue to tolerate.

  NOVEMBER 26TH, 12:45 A.M.

  I find myself at Nick’s again, waiting for David to show up. Lucas and I came together, but he is too drunk to function, so he parked himself at one end of the bar, staring at his phone, while I schmooze with our buddies. Everyone at Nick’s thinks that Lucas and I are the perfect couple, and it’s a very delicate dance, because we know this perception, and without speaking, we do everything we can to uphold it. Even if I’m afraid he might end up killing me when we are alone, in front of others, we put on the show that we need to put on to pretend to ourselves that each of us is fine, and that together we are the ideal couple: the beacon of domestic bliss that shines amid the crumbling failures of their past. It gives hope, and I am in the business of giving hope.

  If I told them that he beats me, or that he had sex with a faceless hooker in the back room of a porn store earlier today, or that he is currently wolfing oxycodone in the bathroom, it would ruin their night, and I certainly don’t want that. This perception that Lucas and I are perfect…it helps me believe it. And it’s one of the last strings I have holding my life together.

  David just walked into the bar, and he’s scanning the room trying to find me. I’m waving with one hand while drinking a Jack and Coke with the other. He’s probably the only person who knows the truth about me, the truth about Lucas and some truth about me and Lucas. Our offices share a wall, which means he can hear everything that goes on in mine. When I’m throwing up in the garbage can, or crying into my coffee, he tends to ask questions. Over the years, instead of lying to him, I’ve let him in, and he hasn’t used it against me yet.

  David is my best friend. Not just my work best friend, but the closest thing I have to a real-life best friend. I’ve never slept with him, although maybe I should. He has a crush on me, I can tell, and I flirt with him and humor him just enough to make the crush continue, but I’m careful to never allow it to turn into something that would require reciprocity. Just the way I like it. He walks over, we look at each other, and without saying anything, he drinks from the straw in my drink. I signal to Sid, the bartender, for another round.

  David and I stand too close together and gossip. We find safety in our bubble and use that safety to dismantle the other people around us. David pretends not to notice Lucas. I can’t tell if he’s being polite or defensive.

  Lucas is in a state now. His tie is partially loosened and partially tight, one of the middle buttons of his shirt is undone, his jacket is strewn in a booth somewhere, his glasses are all greased and cockeyed on top of his head, and he needs to lean on the bar for support. Despite this, he’s become even more disarming and lovable to everyone in the room. The cocktail waitresses are huddled in the corner talking about him, and he has his hand on the panty-hosed leg of someone else’s girlfriend. No one seems to mind.

  When I approach, his hand slides back into his own lap.

  “Act like you love me, you stupid asshole,” I say with a smile.

  “I do love you, you dirty whore,” he replies, and he might not be joking. “But I’m tired, and I have a long week coming up, so I’m going home.” He pulls his coat into his hands and makes a show of looking around the bar for his suit jacket. “If you see my jacket, will you bring it home with you? I don’t have time to go searching for it now.”

  “No problem,” I say, hiding the cigarette and lighter I have clutched in my fist, as if I wasn’t about to step outside. If I give him a seamless exit, I can save myself from another one of his drunken attacks.

  “You don’t have to come with me. I’ll get home fine,” he slurs, and I give the panty-hosed girl a side-eye. We perform our saying-goodbye act, with big hugs and kisses, and after he doesn’t bother to pay his tab, he stumbles out the door. I pretend not to notice the panty hose follow him out.

  “You gonna be okay if I go, too?” David asks, joining me in pretending he didn’t see anything.

  “Yeah, I’m probably only going to have one or two more.”

  After tugging his coat over his shoulders, he leaves a fifty on the bar and wraps me in a bear hug. “I’ll see you on Monday, but call me if anything stupid happens, okay?”

  “Thanks, David. I’ll see you Monday. Home safe.”

  Now that David and Lucas are both gone, I can turn my attention to AJ. He’s been sitting at a booth with some people I don’t know, but from the looks he’s been giving me, I know that we’re both waiting for the moment—the moment in time when it’s going to be okay and we can run into the other room, the other world, the other universe where we can wrap up in one another and not worry what anyone else thinks, what anyone else knows, what anyone else can see, but at the same time, we know that that’s never going to happen. So we have to live in between the lines. We have to be somewhere only he knows, and only I know, and no one says anything, because there’s nothing to say. Where we can walk in daylight and hear no voices.

  Even though it’s the same bar we’re always at, somehow the walls seem new to me. All the things around us seem to be brighter. The cheeky quotes written in chalk on the blackboard behind the bar are funnier. The music sounds like something I haven’t been listening to for the last two months. There’s something about the way he looks at me that takes down every single wall I have ever erected in order to keep people out.

  He’s standing at the DJ booth now, putting on a song and pointing at me across the bar. I’m doing everything I can to stay as far away from him as possible. He sees this and he sees me, and he puts on my favorite song and mouths to me, This is for you. I nod like I don’t care but my life explodes and all I can think of is jumping into the rabbit hole with a guy whose full name I don’t know.

  No one is watching, and he walks to me and pulls me toward him, and I bury myself in the crook of his neck, which feels like the safest and most dangerous place in the world, and he tells me, “I like you…more than just sex.” And I laugh at this because I can’t do anything except laugh at this, and he pulls me into his neck and he smells like man, and he tells me he wants to take me away from here, and he asks me again why I’m going out with someone, and I say, “Am I going out with someone?” He tells me that he knows I have a boyfriend, and I say, “It’s because I didn’t know you first,” and he laughs, and he pulls me in closer.

  When he puts my face into his shoulder, a new life flashes in front of me, and then he breaks away. He walks to the bathroom. I check to see if anyone’s looking at us, if anyone’s noticing what’s happening, but no one seems to notice that lightning is striking in this bar, and I follow him to the bathroom. He’s in a stall,
and I stand in front of the sink washing my hands and wait for him to come out but I pretend I’m not waiting.

  He comes out and he didn’t expect to see me, and he notices me so he starts washing his hands, and he looks at me from under his eyebrows and I act innocent like I’m not here for him, and he walks out the door before me, and I think my chance is lost. He dodges into a closet and as I’m walking past the door he reaches out and grabs my hand and pulls me in. The light is on, but he turns it off, and he kisses me and my life catches fire.

  He’s holding me with one arm and using the other to keep the door shut. I’m running my hands through his hair, then down to his ass, and his dick is getting hard against my belt. All I want to do is turn off the world and stay here until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

  He stops kissing me, and he holds my chin and says, “Look at me.” I peer up at him, into the gray abyss of his eyes. The intensity is so brutal that I feel like I will melt into a puddle of sex on the floor. He says, “You’re so beautiful,” and he starts kissing me again, and I finally do melt into a puddle of sex on the floor.

  I have never cared less about Lucas in my life, and I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup right now. We’re furiously making out, and all I want to do is stay, stay, stay here…

  And then it’s over.

  He peeks out for onlookers, then sends me out first when the coast is clear. No one’s the wiser, and I’m holding on to this secret like it’s the nuclear codes. After he says goodbye to the people we know, he kisses me in front of everyone, but still no one notices, and he walks into the night.

  NOVEMBER 29TH, 9:11 A.M.

  Before I can settle into my chair and dig some Advil from my handbag, I hear a steady, slow knocking on my door. I know this knock. It could only be from Eddie, who raps on my door like this incessantly. Eddie does this to David also. I can hear him shuffling between our offices and knocking his pathetic knock. He usually waits outside the conference room for the morning meetings to be over, then walks behind me or David to ask us questions. If he misses this opportunity, he’ll take turns at our doors, knocking until one or both of us has to leave, let someone else in, or we just break down and open up for him.

  “Ssaammm, Daaaviiid.” Eddie strings together his sentences as if each one is a very long word. He upturns the ends of each sentence so everything becomes a question, and he very nearly slurs while still managing to sound lucid. Eddie is not one of my patients, and he isn’t one of David’s, either. He works with Gary, but he has become attached to me and David. Why the two of us, I don’t know—it could be as simple as the accessibility of our offices. The shuffling continues.

  “Ssssaammm… I-know-you’re-in-there… Please-open-up-for-me, Eddie…”

  He sounds like a tire deflating. I pick up my office phone, put it to my ear and loudly start saying “Mmm-hmm.” With my glasses on, I crack the door and peer out at Eddie like I haven’t heard him this whole time. Eddie takes this as an invitation, and he sticks one laceless, dirty sneaker through the door to try to eke his way in. I mouth the words I’m on the phone, we can talk later, thinking this should be sufficient, but thinking wrong.

  “Nnnnooooo, Sssssaaaammm… I’m-heeerrreeee-to-talk-to-you…” He has both his hands on the door and is pushing but not hard enough.

  I make a display of covering the receiver with my free hand and say, “I know, Eddie, and I want to talk to you, too, but this is a very important call. We’ll have to do it later.”

  “Oookkkayyyy… In-an-hour…?” I nod my head as I’m closing the door. I will not answer it in an hour when Eddie returns. I wish I could summon the strength and the energy it would take to give Eddie what he needs, but today I just can’t do it. I couldn’t be bothered to wash my hair this morning, and I woke up with a bloody butterfly stitch stuck in it, so I just put it in an elaborate bun that covers up the bandage. I take off my glasses and put down the phone, and I wonder how much more I can take of this.

  Eddie has been living at Typhlos for God knows how long. In the six years that I’ve been working here, I think there have been three separate instances where he has been pulled from the unit and sent to emergency psychiatric. All of them were due to suicidal behaviors or threats. It’s one of the hardest things about being in this business; we’re supposed to be able to tell whether every suicidal gesture or remark should be taken seriously and then act accordingly every time. But when you have patients rubbing paper clips on their wrists until the red welts squeeze out the tiniest droplet of blood, and everyone else is saying “If I don’t get my orange juice, I’m going to kill myself,” it can get hard to differentiate.

  After the third time that Eddie was removed, about four months ago, we had a morning meeting dedicated specifically to his case. I remember Gary was sweating profusely throughout the entire thing. He would regularly take giant gulps of cherry Gatorade, which left a wet red ring around his upper lip. Gary was scared that he’d be sued if Eddie ended up killing himself. In order to protect himself, Gary would go over every service plan, treatment outcome, case note and evaluation with a fine-tooth comb to check for errors, typos, coffee spills, printing and reprinting these documents until he had a file he believed would render him blameless. Of course, Eddie has no family, so the idea that anyone would sue anyone should Eddie end up dead was somewhat ridiculous.

  I remember Rachel took the meeting over from Gary, who proved himself totally unable to calm down and report on what was happening. She’d made several highlighted photocopies of the important bits of Eddie’s file that she passed out and asked us to share with our “neighbor.” My neighbor was David, as usual. I had been extremely hungover, again, and David was quietly pointing out that I had a cigarette butt in my hair. He removed it without drawing attention, then we silently turned our focus to the handouts. Even though it was only a portion of Eddie’s file, it was thick and riddled with cross outs and updates and changes to his diagnosis. There were Post-its stuck to other Post-its and stapled to several copies of the same documents with black lines bisecting the pages. This was a file that had been tossed around from clinician to clinician after each one had reached the end of his or her rope, and Eddie was slipping through the cracks. One of the greatest sorrows of this business is seeing someone drowning and not being able to save his life.

  I remember David and I flipped rapidly through the pages, scanning for buzzwords, and we simultaneously noticed a statement signed by W.D.R., initials neither of us recognized, dated 2003, that said “Unsalvageable. Beyond help.”

  “What the hell is this?” I unwittingly interrupted Rachel midspeech to express my outrage at this message. “What the hell is this, seriously?”

  “What’s what?” Rachel asked.

  “‘Beyond help’? Aren’t we in the business of helping people? Isn’t that what we’re doing here? There’s no such thing as ‘unsalvageable.’ This is a human being. Not a house after a hurricane. Jesus.”

  “Sam, I agree with you, but remember, Eddie hasn’t been responding to treatment for years.” Rachel.

  “Fine, but when you give up on someone, what the hell are they supposed to do? It’s our job to not give up, right? Am I crazy?” David put his arm around the back of my chair and used his thumb to rub my shoulder. This calmed me down, and when he whispered “easy, tiger” into my ear, it soothed me even more.

  “No, Sam. You’re not crazy at all. I feel the same way.” Still Rachel. I felt overprotective of Eddie because he was so attached to me and David. I still have a soft spot for him.

  As I sit remembering this meeting from months ago, I am suddenly overwhelmed with the idea that I should have opened the door to him. I should have taken the time to talk to him; if no one else was saving him, I should have. I could’ve dived in and rescued him from drowning. But my head is too full of thoughts of Lucas, thoughts of AJ, paranoid ideas of what Lucas would do if he knew about the closet at Nick’s. I can’t muster the energy to focus on Eddie today.

  DECE
MBER 1ST, 5:30 P.M.

  Every year, each staff member who works on the unit has to have a psychological evaluation. Given that so many of the employees here are licensed professionals, capable of performing a competent psych eval, we’ve been doing each other’s evaluations for years and then presenting the results to a representative from the New York State Office of Mental Health, which we just call OMH. Should any of the employees be deemed in any way unfit to be working in such a stressful and sensitive environment, some kind of action is taken. Of course, it seems ludicrous to insist on these precautions, considering you must be crazy to actually want to work here.

  This year, due to a major change in the country’s national awareness and vigilance about mental health, we’re not allowed to give each other the evaluations. Instead, there are several highly trained, ruthless and not at all cozy psychiatrists independently contracted by OMH to come in and provide in-depth weeklong evaluations of each one of us. Each member of the staff, especially those who have access to all the patients, all the files—not to mention all the drugs—are to be interviewed by two separate psychiatrists. These interviews will include a battery of psychological exams and interrogations, as well as thorough background checks. Needless to say, I am shitting myself in anticipation. The batteries begin on Monday. I am promising that I will not drink myself into a stupor this weekend, because I know I have to be lucid on Monday. Lucid on Monday. Lucid on Monday.

  I’ve spent the day willing the hours to pass so I could get to this moment where David and I can escape our real lives and wander down a drunken rabbit hole. The days at Typhlos are always long and tiring, but with the new patients coming in and the responsibilities escalating, the possibility for a truly relaxing exodus is diminishing. I have been looking forward to dodging out of here with David and evading anything that could be considered a grown-up obligation.